Late-night bonanza at All My Friends Music Festival

Dani Shivers and San Pedro el Cortez were some of the Tijuana fest's highlights

Last Saturday, I headed to Tijuana to check out All My Friends Music Festival, a
daylong event held at a tacky, rundown mansion on the edge of a cliff.
This type of thing could never have happened in San Diego—police
would’ve shut it down because of noise complaints or code violations.
But the cops were working security at this event, so it was allowed to
rage until the early hours of the morning.

The
festival could’ve been organized better—nobody bothered to post a band
schedule, and vendors didn’t start selling beer until hours after the
event began. But the vibe was fun, the food was cheap (props to the
table selling Nutella on toast) and a Vice magazine photographer would’ve had a field day with the crowd of uber-hip young Tijuanenses.

Some
of the bands seemed stuck in a mid-’90s time warp with dated emo and
alt-rock offerings, but the music got fresher as the day went on. Among
the highlights was San Pedro el Cortez, a badass garage-rock
band that drove the crowd wild with vintage riffs. For a finale, they
set off fireworks affixed to their guitar necks, letting yellow sparks
spew all over the room. Did I mention code violations?

And then there was Dani Shivers, a
young Tijuana artist who plays lo-fi goth-pop on vintage Casio
keyboards. Wearing black eye shadow and a thin white shawl, she looked
mysterious as she laid out warm synth chords and crude dance beats and
cooed into the microphone. At once sinister and childlike, her
performance was downright mesmerizing.

In
the end, my biggest complaint was that the overzealous cops refused to
let me bring in a can of Diet Coke. But if that’s what it takes to
keep a fest like this going, so be it.